gbadev.org forum archive

Ported this over the weekend, I think it's in a state now where some people will be able to use it. Initial reports are that it has issues running on CF-based carts, I only have a SuperCard SD to test with so I haven't been able to debug it on CF to see what's going on.

Built against SaTa's modified FAT libraries from REIN (SD users probably want this):
http://www.cryptosystem.org/projects/nds/picodriveds.nds
http://www.cryptosystem.org/projects/nds/picodriveds.nds.gba

Built against chishm's FAT libraries with just CF enabled:
http://www.cryptosystem.org/projects/nds/picodriveds-cf.nds
http://www.cryptosystem.org/projects/nds/picodriveds-cf.nds.gba

Copy it to your media, then copy over the Genesis ROMs you want to play (it should be able to play ROMs with .BIN, .GEN, and .SMD extensions). There's no sound, but since it uses the Cyclone 68k core which is optimized for ARM it runs well for the most part. Scaling is done in-software right now so the downscale isn't as fast or good as it could be. There's no double buffering yet so you might see tearing on some games. Y/B/A are A/B/C.

Screenshots:
http://www.cryptosystem.org/projects/nds/picodriveds-0.1-1.jpg
http://www.cryptosystem.org/projects/nds/picodriveds-0.1-2.jpg
http://www.cryptosystem.org/projects/nds/picodriveds-0.1-3.jpg
http://www.cryptosystem.org/projects/nds/picodriveds-0.1-4.jpg

Video:
http://www.cryptosystem.org/projects/nds/spaceharrier2.wmv

That's sweet. How is compatibility? I can't give this a try right now unfortunately as my DS broke. It will be one of the first things I give a go though once I get my replacement.

Compatibility is good for the most part, with some games it's hard to tell due to copy protection code. Pirates! Gold for example, has the same issue under my emulator and a few others I've tried where it just reboots every time you press a button, and I'm thinking it's due to copy protection stuff.

Cool!
Genesis is definietly a good system to have an emulator for.
Will test immediately!

Regarding sound... does the emulator you are porting support sound? (I'm just wondering if there's any chance that would happen some day :) )
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The emulator I'm porting has some YM2612/sound emulation code but I'm not sure how well it works (if at all), because it's not enabled in the original version either.

Ryan FB wrote:

Compatibility is good for the most part, with some games it's hard to tell due to copy protection code. Pirates! Gold for example, has the same issue under my emulator and a few others I've tried where it just reboots every time you press a button, and I'm thinking it's due to copy protection stuff.

Sweet. You're already way ahead of SNESDS then :P

this isnt working on my M3SD :(
can you make a build which clears memory before booting as the m3 doesnt do this

this is great, cant wait until you get it close to full speed, save states would be great too, and multiplayer, but speed being the most important

this are the games ive tested

Commercial Game - Doesnt Work
10 Commercial Games - Work

ps if you have any games you want tested i have plenty of time to do it

Okay, I can confirm that it's loading and running games on GBAMP on a Flashme v6 DS with Moonshell as a bootloader!

Really nice, as I suspected... could always use a speed boost, of course, but I won't pressure you!
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Last edited by Mr. Picklesworth on Wed Jun 07, 2006 3:19 pm; edited 1 time in total

If you downloaded in the past 10 minutes or so, you might redownload as for a few minutes I accidentally had a debug build up that ran much slower than normal. If you have this build gameplay will probably be on the bottom screen.

SUGOI !!!!!
nice work mate.
I tried street of rage 1 and it work well ^^, I can't wait to see the full speed and the sound :D

Will it be possible to switch to mode full screen with a button ?

Keep the good work and thx for this ;)

Am I doing something wrong? I am able to run the emulator but I haven't been able to run a darn rom yet! I try to load the rom...Then I wait....Wait.....Wait....Wait.....Wait....There! It displays rom info in the bottom screen...Waiting....Waiting....Waiting.....Duh where is the rom being played? Top screen is blank, bottom screen shows the info...Nothing! :(

I'm using a SCSD.

hahaha! so great! i played marble madness over 1h on my ds now!

P.S. Duke Nukem 3D doesnt work

Black screen on top tested with confirmed to be working ROMs.

Atleast Egga outputs sound and crappy graphics ;P

Edit: Sources please! maybe I will speed it up a bit...
*waves with a white [2D HW] flag*

Last edited by LiraNuna on Wed Jun 07, 2006 11:51 am; edited 2 times in total

I get a black screen too. It seems to load fine, and the info is displayed on the bottom screen, but nothing happens after that.

Edit: I tried it on Supercard CF and GBAMP. Same thing on both.

it's working fine with me. i'll write up a list of my working not working roms when i get a min.

People getting white screens on supercard: try prepending ndsloader, in my experience this usually fixes such problems, although of course this shouldn't be needed....

streets of rage 2 doesnt work (M3SD) :(

(it sais loaded

blablabla)

but.. it will crash :D

This is the greatest emulator on the DS! Incredible job, Ryan!

I've tested six games, and they work. I've noticed that Sonic the Hedgehog 2 runs smoother than any of the games I've tried.

HtheB wrote:

streets of rage 2 doesnt work (M3SD) :(

(it sais loaded

blablabla)

but.. it will crash :D

Street of rage 2 works, i just tried it and its fine as the first one ^^. need normal speed and sound and if possible full screen :D
++

Nuja wrote:

HtheB wrote:

streets of rage 2 doesnt work (M3SD) :(

(it sais loaded

blablabla)

but.. it will crash :D

Street of rage 2 works, i just tried it and its fine as the first one ^^. need normal speed and sound and if possible full screen :D
++

how did you manage it ? :|

Great first release!
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HtheB wrote:

Nuja wrote:

HtheB wrote:

streets of rage 2 doesnt work (M3SD) :(

(it sais loaded

blablabla)

but.. it will crash :D

Street of rage 2 works, i just tried it and its fine as the first one ^^. need normal speed and sound and if possible full screen :D
++

how did you manage it ? :|

I did nothing special. maybe its your "rom" which is not good.

Nuja wrote:

HtheB wrote:

Nuja wrote:

HtheB wrote:

streets of rage 2 doesnt work (M3SD) :(

(it sais loaded

blablabla)

but.. it will crash :D

Street of rage 2 works, i just tried it and its fine as the first one ^^. need normal speed and sound and if possible full screen :D
++

how did you manage it ? :|

I did nothing special. maybe its your "rom" which is not good.

PM me the good one :(

Please check your PM Nuja ?_?"

omg warez monkeys
I'd love to try this but my ds lite aint flashed and my gawd damn superpass 2 aint arrived yet :(, looks pretty cool though

stingfist wrote:

It displays rom info in the bottom screen...Waiting....Waiting....Waiting.....Duh where is the rom being played? Top screen is blank, bottom screen shows the info...Nothing! :(

I'm using a SCSD.

This happens to a few people and I'm not yet sure what's causing it. From the information I've gotten from those who've run a debug build, it seems like the VBlank interrupt only occurs once or twice after emulation starts, then it just stops completely.

uzumakishade wrote:

this is great, cant wait until you get it close to full speed, save states would be great too, and multiplayer, but speed being the most important

this are the games ive tested

Commercial Game - Doesnt Work
10 Commercial Games - Work

ps if you have any games you want tested i have plenty of time to do it

Whata! How did you get any of those to work? I'm using M3CF. Tried Sonic 2, 3 and 'and knuckles'.

does this work on supercard CF?
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It's happaning because of a frame counter placed in an IRQ.
devkitARM r18+ has this unknown problem.

seems like accessing to a volatile int in VBlank which has a value >10 will freeze (????)

happands in two of my programs on the new devkits (ToD and WonDerS)
Seems like a memory problem to me... (both of them are using a lot of it)

Being able to play genesis games at even 1fps on the DS has been the joy of this week, and a great birthday present.

I love you. :P

Different versions of some games seem to make the difference between working and not, I tried two versions of sonic 1, one worked and one didn't.

Golden Axe 1 also confirmed to be working.
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mntorankusu wrote:

I get a black screen too. It seems to load fine, and the info is displayed on the bottom screen, but nothing happens after that.

same here on gbamp hacked +flashme v7

I was happy to note that Phantasy Star 4 seemed to work for the few minutes I played it, as well as three other games.

Landstalker crashes when you try to start a new game though.
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does this work on supercard CF?

someone please answer!!!
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GBAMP+CF+Flashme = dosnt work :(

Gets stuck after it loads it.
(that is, when "PicoDriveDS 0.1" appeats at the bottom center)
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thundrestrike wrote:

does this work on supercard CF?

someone please answer!!!

Why don't you try it and find out?

I really really look forward to this :)
(when its CF card compatible, which i guess is my problem).

For the people that have it working, whats the speed/framerate like?
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Darkflame wrote:

GBAMP+CF+Flashme = dosnt work :(

Gets stuck after it loads it.
(that is, when "PicoDriveDS 0.1" appeats at the bottom center)

That setup works great for me, try it on a different game, I've found that even different versions of the same game can make a difference.
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not working for me either, with 90% of games i get the black screen on top, the other 10% everything goes all blue.

i'm using a supercard SD + flashme v7.

Last edited by ethoscapade on Wed Jun 07, 2006 8:59 pm; edited 1 time in total

I tried it on my supercard CF with superpass and 1 go danelec.
I just put the .nds in my cf, unpacked some roms in it and that's all.

I tried over seven games; all were working.
Speed was about 75% of real speed.

Pretty impressive fro a first release.
Contra was unplayable due to glitches

great works
I've just try thunder force 4 and the game crash (after the trainer)
Thunder 3 works fine but game stop and restart, 3 second after when taking an item. I suppose it come from the fact that there some sampled voice at this moment.
But however, PicoDS is so goood !

I was trying Sonic 1...which i thought should work.

ok, ill try a few others...

Some act the same; others crash earlier at the "Rom Head Info:"

maybe because I am running Moonshell?
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great start !
i just tried sonic1 and it ran pretty well (at like 15-20fps i don't know)
i'm using gbamp2 + MoonShell 1.31 Beta 3 as a bootloader + flashme v6. (using CF version of the emu obviously)

arg..crazy..whats wrong with mine?!?!
Thats exactly my setup.

-*[/yarr]*-
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I tried 8 grames, and they all crash after "picodriverDS 0.1" appears.

Whats happening at that point code wise? what should happen next?

try to track down why this program dosnt work for me.
Maybe directory structure has a barring?
(even though i can browser/select files fine..I have it on the route, the *.smd games in a folder.)
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i'm pretty sure it's just something strange in the way it'd being compiled.

for example.. remember the darkain multi-nds loader from last summer, when a lot of people still had straightup flashcarts rather than SD media adaptors, and the multiboot software provided by flashcart manufacturers only worked on commercial roms?

that stopped working for me when i upgraded to flashme v4. couldn't tell you why.

Gota try to think what the difference is.

I'm using flashme6, booting straight to moonshell, then loading the emu.

I'm on a GBAMP2, 512MB CF. (freshly formated)

The emu is in the root, the roms in a folder marked "megadrive".
I am using *.smd rom types.
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I'm not sure if it would help here, but if your compiling with the -mthumb flag you might get a nice speed boost if you remove it.
I got a nice FPS boost in wolf3d by getting rid of it.

hmm, I'm using GBAMP2, 256MB CF card, with the emu and a load of other stuff in the root and the roms in a folder called "sega". Both .bin and .smd have been working.

Games:

Fighting game - Fully working
Platformer - Fully working
Platformer - Working with some glitches
Overhead platformer - Not working
Racing game - Shows one screen then goes black
Baseball game - Menu works fine, doesn't get into the actual game

Also which of the below are you using? I'm using the second one and it works, although I have also tested the first and that appears to work fine too.

Ryan FB wrote:

Built against SaTa's modified FAT libraries from REIN (SD users probably want this):
http://www.cryptosystem.org/projects/nds/picodriveds.nds
http://www.cryptosystem.org/projects/nds/picodriveds.nds.gba

Built against chishm's FAT libraries with just CF enabled:
http://www.cryptosystem.org/projects/nds/picodriveds-cf.nds
http://www.cryptosystem.org/projects/nds/picodriveds-cf.nds.gba

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lo Ryan FB,

Will u keep working into this project ?
Will u add sound support ? full screen mode ? and normal speed ?
Any idea of the date of the next release ?
:D

see ya ++

I tried it out on my GBAMP with 128 MB card running on flashme launched through moonshell and it works great. The emu is not even in the root folder and it still works great. I'm using the one built with chishm's FAT libraries and strider is working pretty well.
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Okay, 0.1.1 is up now (files are in the same location as the first post). Not any major changes, but hopefully a few fixes. The frameskip code was completely rewritten, and may be a little better now. Most importantly, the IRQ/VBlank code was redone and might fix the issues some users have been seeing where they just get a black screen after loading a ROM. A special thanks goes out to LiraNuna for helping me with these fixes and putting up with my stupid questions.

good work!

Zed0 wrote:

Also which of the below are you using? I'm using the second one and it works, although I have also tested the first and that appears to work fine too.

Ryan FB wrote:

Built against SaTa's modified FAT libraries from REIN (SD users probably want this):
http://www.cryptosystem.org/projects/nds/picodriveds.nds
http://www.cryptosystem.org/projects/nds/picodriveds.nds.gba

Built against chishm's FAT libraries with just CF enabled:
http://www.cryptosystem.org/projects/nds/picodriveds-cf.nds
http://www.cryptosystem.org/projects/nds/picodriveds-cf.nds.gba

I was using the second "picodriveds-cf.nds".
guess i'll try more roms...
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works fine for me now.

great, great, great stuff. the only game i've found to be really playable at this point is rocket knight adventures, but, still, i can't wait to see more.

edit: tested all the roms i have, which isn't many, but they all "work" perfectly. thrilled to see somebody other than loopy jumping on the DS emu train. throw that sound processor on the arm7 already! =)

if i may ask, why isn't the image scaled to the full resolution of the DS's screen? you're scaling in software, you said?

update again: specific compatibility, why not
because it induces piracy. --mod

all of the below work.
8 platformers
1 scrolling fighter
1 horizontal shooter

contra hard corps doesn't scroll the background properly, so that one doesn't work, but, again, the only honestly playable game i've tried so far, given the speed, is rocket knight.

Last edited by ethoscapade on Thu Jun 08, 2006 2:50 am; edited 2 times in total

Wow! I updated and it works now :)

This has to be the best first release emulator ever :D
Amazing stuff.
Sonics a tad too jerky to play, but the shear number of compatible games already is fantastic.

Obviously all sorts off odds and sods to work on, but the first simple one, imo;
*Reset (so you can load a new rom without restarting)

Id like to test all my roms for compatibility :D
(Got like, 100)
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Thank you for making this. I've always wanted a Genesis emulator for the DS and now there's finally one. The first version didn't work for me (M3 CF), but 0.1.1 now works. Thanks!

Now for games tested:

Altered Beast (JU) (REV 02) [!] - Works
Castlevania - Bloodlines (U) [!] - Works, but your character's sprite dissapears after awhile.
Samurai Shodown (U) [!] - Works
Shadow Run (U) [!] - Works (duh), but the health bar is missing.
Yuu Yuu Hakusho - Makyou Toitsusen (J) - Works

Most of the games aren't running at full speed, but 70-90% speed is still good! All we need now is a larger screen, higher FPS, sounds, and saves/save states.

Anyone think we should make a separate thread for compatibility? Or is this type of stuff off limits...
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Last edited by tepples on Sat Aug 05, 2006 6:42 pm; edited 1 time in total

Nice. First version didn't work on my GBAmp with CF card, however, this one plays the only game I've went to get, which is toejam and earl (a little slow, but still playable).

edit: also played Cosmic spacehead. Aside from the text being a bit small to read sometimes, it plays great.

Keep it up! Looks great.

Nice try, morever when we can read you did it "only" in a week-end.

But is it me or the game screen isn't using the entire DS resolution ? There's some black borders, like with the GBA titles.

The speed is really good for a first version, and the compabitility too (the three games I tested worked without any graphicals glitches)

An "unscaled mode" with a way to scroll up/down the screen wouldn't be bad though one day, or maybe if the entire DS screen is used, the scaling would look a bit better (with some games, the text is a bit hard to read, like Ragnacenty (not sure of the name), "Soleil" for the french name.

Oh, it's seems some people said the same about the screen size, so, my bad ^^

yes it would be great if it made use of more of the ds screen and also if anyone hasnt noticed the first two pixels in the top left corner are missing

EDIT: it appears the 2 top pixels being missing was a game specific thing

Wow, now it works for me! [tears of bliss] Sonic, in all its original glory - well, sort of... a bit slow, no sound, but great indeed in my M3 miniSD.

Maybe you could benefit from looking at GENS sourcecode; And, if you could contact Steve Snake, author of the best DOS-era genesis emulator (KGEN98) and one of the best windows genesis emulators (Kega fusion), then your PicodriveDS could improve a lot, quickly... But then it could be just me daydreaming...

-------[EDIT]--------

Is the compatibility post already up? I've tested so far only 6 ROMs, and heres my results:
Platformer - Works about 70% speed
Platformer - Works about 90% speed
Disney platformer - Works about 70% speed
Racing game - Does not boot after loading rom
Scrolling fighter - Does not boot after loading rom
Platformer - Freezes at rom header (as it is actually 2 games jointed up)

minor request for next version;

*You can hold down to scroll files, rather then having to keep pressing it :)
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For all the people asking about resolution, yes 0.1.1 does not use the full resolution of the DS. This is because the scaling was done in software and to keep it fast it was mostly just some bit shifting that let me get it down to a specific resolution. I got hardware scaling working last night, and you can probably expect to see it in the next release:

http://cryptosystem.org/projects/nds/picodriveds-hwscale.jpg

w00t!
Finally!!!!

Streets Of Rage 2 on the Nintendo DS!! :D

* me happy * :P
:D

Do you have any plans to make things? :)
Like a ToDo list:

(graphics, sound, netplay??) :)

Ryan FB wrote:

For all the people asking about resolution, yes 0.1.1 does not use the full resolution of the DS. This is because the scaling was done in software and to keep it fast it was mostly just some bit shifting that let me get it down to a specific resolution. I got hardware scaling working last night, and you can probably expect to see it in the next release:

http://cryptosystem.org/projects/nds/picodriveds-hwscale.jpg

Fantastic!
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Great work. Congratulations.

Also an option to reset the emulator or go back to the rom menu without turn off/on the DS would be great too.

63 games tested out of my 200 games set.

Working : The game is working without problems.
Don't Work : The game don't load.
Working/Don't Work : The game is loading fine, but have a problem during the game, like a freeze.

Note : The tests don't consider the speed.

I will merge all the lists when I'll have finish it.

PicoDriverDS 0.1.1 Compatibility List (63 Games) :
--------------------------------------------------
Moved to PH.

Last edited by Hiei- on Thu Jun 08, 2006 6:05 pm; edited 1 time in total

wow! compatibilty for this is great!
you just opened up a whole new console for us!

ive a little question though... how didja get the name "picodrive"? ;D
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Picodrive is an emulator for Nokia Symbian s60 phones. This apprears to be a port of it. I'm hoping he will port the SNES emulator as well, as it is just as good with compatibility. It has some speed problems as well, but at least you can play most games, unlike SNESDS.

There are no open source SNES emulatores for Nokia Serie60 symbian phones, and picodrive for symbian is already a port from the cyclone 6800 core for ARM from Dave (Finalburn).

Remember howver that the slowest S60 phone runs at 104Mhz and that at that speed, it is not full speed, however with newer phones at 220Mhz, it runs very well.

He can re-write the GPU emulation to direct to the DS's HW for max speed.
DS has great graphic accelration engine which must be used ;)

Framebuffers tend to be slow, and with such an optimized CPU core i'm sure you'll be able to pass the 60Hz mark. trust me on that one.

Fleet-C wrote:

There are no open source SNES emulatores for Nokia Serie60 symbian phones, and picodrive for symbian is already a port from the cyclone 6800 core for ARM from Dave (Finalburn).

Remember howver that the slowest S60 phone runs at 104Mhz and that at that speed, it is not full speed, however with newer phones at 220Mhz, it runs very well.

Speed is already really good for a first version.

By the way, I didn't put it on the list cuz the speed isn't fixed yet, but some games are too fast lol ^^

Maybe the sound, if implementend would make problems to have full speed, but at least, the emu can stay without sound, that's not a big deal on portable.

Edit : Another great option would be to be able to use "Left-Right Control Pad Arrow to jump 10 roms before or after, in the list".

You could use some z80 core from a master system emulator for the GBA, and run it from arm7 to handle the sound?

Don't know at all, but personally, I don't really care about sound.

If I read right, it's a port, so it would mean the original emulator doesn't output sound like it's written, so it would need to be coded, but code from scratch and port are not the same thing.

i care about sound...

just picture a metroid game without sound. its not metroid now is it?
sound is a big role in games...
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But you prefer not to be able to play Metroid at all, than playing it without sound?

It's just a first version anyway, let's just wait.

The problem with sound and the mega drive is that it is based on the master system z80 processor, which means that if you want sound, you pretty much have to have a master system emulator + a mega drive emulator, which in the S60 takes a big performance hit, but in our case, could be spread between the arm9 and the arm7, one for the 68000 core, video output and so on and the arm7 for sound. As I said before, I believe there are some open source z80 cores for ARM around.

Would you want to play DDR without sound?
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Well, you can have "some" sound without a z80 core, it is mostly used to play drums and samples, the question is: Would you like to have a megadrive emulator with _some_ sounds? :)

I'm imposing a new rule for this topic to discourage piracy discussion: You may discuss the emulator compatibility of no more than two game titles per post. If you want to post compatibility lists, there's another site that would be glad to take them.
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Last edited by tepples on Sat Jun 10, 2006 4:08 pm; edited 3 times in total

tepples wrote:

Would you want to play DDR without sound?

DDR is DDR.

You can also say "Would you want to play DS without screen?"

But, that just my point, yeah, I prefer no sound than bad speed.

I think realtime speeds and improved graphics is more important then sound
but its a bonus
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Mrshlee wrote:

I think realtime speeds and improved graphics is more important then sound
but its a bonus

Honestly, I think just the opposite.

Most games just aren't that fun to me without sound.

I've played the SNES emulator for S60 and believe me, speed is most important. Sound really slows it down to the point where it's almost unplayable. We're not talking about a little speed hit because of sound. It's a major hit. Probably the same for the DS at this point. Most important is to get the games up to speed, and then see about sound. After all, you're playing the games, not listening to them. Sound enhances gameplay, but it isn't gameplay :P

Full speed is way more important (for me...) than sound, you might think that you would enjoy more a game with sound, but try to play with a frameskip of 2 or 3 and you will quickly change your mind.

Look, I dont see what the dicusion is here.
Sound is a HUGE part of the enjoyment of a game, but a game is often unplayable if the speed isnt high enough.
Its not an OR.

As for this emu, its very early days.
However, I dont think sound is impossible, its just going to take a little while.
(its not like say, the snes emu on the gba were it needs every last cycle)

Remember also, we have a near-perfect SMS emulator for the GBA with sound. (DrSMS)
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hiei, you are talking like the only option is gameplay with no sound, or sound with no gameplay

im sure he will figure out a way to put both in it
lets get back on topic about this!

let him do the work :)
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Two fighting games by Midway work fine; two newer ones crash.

i'll hope that import 6 buttons instead of 3

thx for this emu!

Certainly an already asked question but i think that could help...

Anybody knows how to put that useless bottom screen off to reduce energy
consumption ?

No feature to do that yet, its a bit minor though really.
Maybe later it can have an auto-off like NesDS does.
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Dune works!!!
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PicoDriveDS 0.1.2 is up. Changes:

Switched from Cyclone 0.0080 to Reesy's Cyclone 0.0084
Switched from software scaling to hardware scaling
Added three scale modes: Stretch, Aspect, and 1:1
Cycle through scale modes with L
Position the window in 1:1 mode by holding R and using the D-Pad
Added soft reset (press select, takes you back to the ROM list)
Added NDS banner information (shows up in WMB)

Ryan FB wrote:

PicoDriveDS 0.1.2 is up. Changes:

Switched from Cyclone 0.0080 to Reesy's Cyclone 0.0084
Switched from software scaling to hardware scaling
Added three scale modes: Stretch, Aspect, and 1:1
Cycle through scale modes with L
Position the window in 1:1 mode by holding R and using the D-Pad
Added soft reset (press select, takes you back to the ROM list)
Added NDS banner information (shows up in WMB)

Thank u man, I really appreciate your work.

edit: everything works fine. Do u think u can make it run faster ? Do u plan to add sound support ? thank in advance for the answers.

++

I have one suggestion: can you build this with the latest version of chishm's lib so that MK3 users are able to use this?

Keep up the good work!

ahh..Soft Reset! Perfect, thanks :)
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Holy crap, incredible work again!

question/suggestion: will multiplayer ever be possible with this?>

uzumakishade wrote:

question/suggestion: will multiplayer ever be possible with this?>

Lets let him get the on with the more "doable" things first before trying the map-cap hard stuff.
Gunstar heroes would be amazing, but you cant do this sort of thing till the "core" of the emulator is well made.
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Multiplayer will be very possible, using the Kaillera technique of exchanging keypress data. But Darkflame is right: don't expect it immediately, and don't expect it to work outside the range of a compatible 802.11b access point until someone extends sgstair's Wi-Fi library to add ad-hoc mode or a soft AP.
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oh i never meant wifi multiplayer, i basic wireless multiplayer, and i didnt expect it it suddenly, i just wanted to kno if it was possible i would definately want full speed, sound, saving/save states before multiplayer anyways

Thundrestrike : I was just saying that I prefer no sound than sound with less than 60fps, but if one day, both are perfect, I have not against it ^^

I'll retest the games already tested soon with v1.2 :)

Suggestion: L button will be necessary for emulate 6 buttons controller (i wanna play street fighter please!), maybe the button for the scaling switch will be a good idea to use a combination of buttons (example: L button + Select or Select + Start...)

Yop!
It's a very good job! I'm fond of amiga game, and genesis give lot of them! one of the best portable ds emulation!

Speed is good, quick reset is fantastic, and enlarge mode make me feel i'm not foward a little screen...

I have so waiting for a genesis emulator... Thanck's a lot !

Ryan FB wrote:

PicoDriveDS 0.1.2 is up. Changes:

Switched from Cyclone 0.0080 to Reesy's Cyclone 0.0084
Switched from software scaling to hardware scaling
Added three scale modes: Stretch, Aspect, and 1:1
Cycle through scale modes with L
Position the window in 1:1 mode by holding R and using the D-Pad
Added soft reset (press select, takes you back to the ROM list)
Added NDS banner information (shows up in WMB)

- The three scaled modes are nice, even the little one (the one of the old releases) is maybe a bit useless but if it don't bug or slowdown something, that's not a problem

- The option to position the window rox :)

- The Reset too.

An option to jump 10 roms after or before with the Left-Right D-PAD Arrow wouldn't be a bad idea though, but that's not hurry.

KorteX wrote:

Suggestion: L button will be necessary for emulate 6 buttons controller (i wanna play street fighter please!), maybe the button for the scaling switch will be a good idea to use a combination of buttons (example: L button + Select or Select + Start...)

hmmm, personally, I prefer it stay to L (and the position to R) than have to use some things like "? + ?" or another "? + ?", but at least, a "redefinite key" menu is possible one day.

You can, anyway, play Street Fighter with 6 buttons, just use 4 buttons like all Snk Games (Low Punch / Low Kick / High Punch / High Kick).

In the olds days, I was playing it with a 3 buttons controllers for the 2nd player (High Punch / High Kick) and I don't think lot of people use the Low/Med/High, at least, just two of them).

Hiei- wrote:

Thundrestrike : I was just saying that I prefer no sound than sound with less than 60fps, but if one day, both are perfect, I have not against it ^^

umm... snes/megadrive games didnt really work at 60fps anyway :-/
Updateing the screen more often then the game sprites could possibly be moveing at is a bit pointless.

I think most megadrive games were about 25fps, but I could be wrong.

Any framerate above 20 I find my eyes can adjust too, as long as its "stable". (eg, a stable 20 is better then jumping between 30-60)

Most cartoons are animated at, like 12fps :p
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Darkflame wrote:

umm... snes/megadrive games didnt really work at 60fps anyway :-/

The North American and Japanese versions of F-Zero and Super Mario Kart ran at a stable 60 frames per second.

Quote:

Updateing the screen more often then the game sprites could possibly be moveing at is a bit pointless.

Unless it's updating the screen on every scanline, creating a raster effect.

Quote:

I think most megadrive games were about 25fps, but I could be wrong.

Sonic the Hedgehog for the Japanese Mega Drive and North American Genesis ran at a stable 60 frames per second except possibly in scenes with the ring loss particle effect. I don't see how 25fps would look all that stable unless you're in Europe, as 25fps on NTSC or PAL/M is a 2:2:3:2:3 cadence.
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It works great so far except for one thing. While RPGs like Phantasy Star 4 and Might and Magic work fine, they are unplayable because there is no support for saving games. Hopefully SRAM saving can be implemented fairly easily.

tepples wrote:

Darkflame wrote:

umm... snes/megadrive games didnt really work at 60fps anyway :-/

The North American and Japanese versions of F-Zero and Super Mario Kart ran at a stable 60 frames per second.

O_O
Are you sure? not fields per second? :p
I got Mario Kart on my snes and it certainly looks no where near as smooth as MKDS.
I mean, ignoring the sprite graphics, the movement seems an order of magnitude smoother.

Quote:

Updateing the screen more often then the game sprites could possibly be moveing at is a bit pointless.

Unless it's updating the screen on every scanline, creating a raster effect.

Wouldn't that create rather visible distortions on fast moving objects?
Or, in the case of the background, a noticeable slant ?

Quote:

I think most megadrive games were about 25fps, but I could be wrong.

Sonic the Hedgehog for the Japanese Mega Drive and North American Genesis ran at a stable 60 frames per second except possibly in scenes with the ring loss particle effect. I don't see how 25fps would look all that stable unless you're in Europe, as 25fps on NTSC or PAL/M is a 2:2:3:2:3 cadence.[/quote]

25 as in "roughly" I meant. (so, 24,30 and what-not)

I just find it amazing that a system with such low clockspeed by todays standards can update moveing objects that many times per second.
Did sonic drop frames? I thought almost no games from that time did.
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Darkflame wrote:

tepples wrote:

Darkflame wrote:

umm... snes/megadrive games didnt really work at 60fps anyway :-/

The North American and Japanese versions of F-Zero and Super Mario Kart ran at a stable 60 frames per second.

O_O
Are you sure? not fields per second? :p

All games for NTSC NES and well over 95 percent of games for Genesis and Super NES ran in 240p, a nonstandard progressive mode compatible with NTSC sets. In progressive modes, there's no difference between a field and a frame.

Quote:

I got Mario Kart on my snes and it certainly looks no where near as smooth as MKDS.
I mean, ignoring the sprite graphics, the movement seems an order of magnitude smoother.

The floor texturing system in Super Mario Kart has a bug such that the floor can only be scrolled to even texel boundaries. F-Zero does not have this limitation. But I do remember Mario Kart Super Circuit for GBA having an additional limitation that while moving is 60fps, turning is 30fps. I'll investigate Super Mario Kart further once I find an emulator capable of single stepping.

EDIT: Super Mario Kart does in fact run at 60fps.

Quote:

Updateing the screen more often then the game sprites could possibly be moveing at is a bit pointless.

Unless it's updating the screen on every scanline, creating a raster effect.

Wouldn't that create rather visible distortions on fast moving objects?
Or, in the case of the background, a noticeable slant ?

I must have misunderstood what you meant by "updating the screen".

Quote:

I just find it amazing that a system with such low clockspeed by todays standards can update moveing objects that many times per second.
Did sonic drop frames? I thought almost no games from that time did.

Sonic slowed down slightly on ring loss.
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that was due to the mass amount of rings though
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Hello!
I tested PicoDrive DS 0.1.2 and want to report some Bugs:

"Shinobi 3 - Return of the Ninja Master" - works good, has small graphic Bug when using "JITSU OF IKAZUCHI" main character becomes Black.(edit: main char. isn't becoming black but the jitsu is invisible, then if I jump main character is invisible but I can see the Jitsu( at this moment in the mid air)

"Sonic and Knuckles" - playable has many graphics glitches (too slow?)

Random Disney platformer - Doesn't Work (Black Screen)

What about having the redimensionnal thing using the touch screen? thus it would not displease the six-buttons fans, neither the combination button press haters. I personally would like a six-button behaviour that uses all six buttons of the DS (as if you were pluging a snes controller on your genesis system).

To Ryan :

About the scaling problem with the game using the smaller resolution, I think, if you decide to fix it that a choice on a
menu is the best way. They aren't a lot of games which are using it (5 of the 30 games I test, so an average of 1.6% right now).
Another way would be to check the header of those roms and if they are in the database of the emu, the emu change the scaling of the rom, but I found that hard to update. If you decide to support all the version of all the roms, it'll cost you a lot of time to add them all.

I think a menu like "Fixed scaling for games using ???x??? resolution : Yes - No" is more than enough.

Also, the SC SD seems to support only 60 files by folder, so an option in the rom list menu which bring you back on the [..] (to go out a directory fast, cuz if you are on the last rom, you need to make "up/up/up/etc..." and even with an option to jump "ten by ten", it wouldn't be perfect) by pushing "B" for example (DS "B", but the Genesis one on your emu is the same anyway ^^ Most of games I saw use this button to go back from a menu) would be cool ^^;

************************

If people want to help with the compatibility, you can post tests of games
BUT NOT HERE unless they're homebrew -mod

This is awsome. Ryan your awsome. Is this the first program you've made for the DS? Compatability is excellent. Is it possible to get full speed? What about sound? 6 Buttons would be nice too. I'm just waiting for your next release. Keep it up. Your on to something. Second release and it's already better than SNESDS. Shoot, maybe you should make your own SNES emulator someday.
I tried fighter, fighter, 4 platformers, platformer, Disney platformer, 2 fighters, platformer, split-screen platformer, scrolling fighter, scrolling fighter, and platformer

sonics were a little too choppy, but all other platformers owned.
Also, after getting hit in platformers, my character always went invisible. Is there a way to fix this? I would help if I could but I don't know much about programming. Gonna learn soon though.

shadowcolt22 wrote:

Also, after getting hit in platformers, my character always went invisible. Is there a way to fix this? I would help if I could but I don't know much about programming. Gonna learn soon though.

In most platformers, when you get hit, your character starts blinking, by making the sprite disappear and reappear. The reason the character disappears in these games is the low frame rate of the emulator. The emulator skips frames to get the speed as close to 100% as possible, and ends up skipping the frames where your character is visible.

The only way I can imagine to fix it would be to improve the frame rate.

youplaboum wrote:

I personally would like a six-button behaviour that uses all six buttons of the DS (as if you were pluging a snes controller on your genesis system).

Including Select? Genesis had A, B, C, X, Y, Z, and Mode (where the R button is on most controllers); DS has Y, B, A, L, X, Select, and R.

mntorankusu wrote:

The only way I can imagine to fix it would be to improve the frame rate.

Or to use a 20 fps (1 frame skip) update instead of 30 fps (2 frame skip).
_________________
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mode could be on select, and then we could use a "rap the screen for a menu" system of loopy's emulators (which honestly i've never really liked, but, hey, better that we could map physical buttons to physical buttons.

Dang. The Moderator edited my last post. Took all the names out of the games I listed. I don't see the big deal. Where are we supposed to post names of games and how they ran for this project?

[quote="tepples"][quote="youplaboum"]I personally would like a six-button behaviour that uses all six buttons of the DS (as if you were pluging a snes controller on your genesis system).[/quote]
Including Select? Genesis had A, B, C, X, Y, Z, and Mode (where the R button is on most controllers); DS has Y, B, A, L, X, Select, and R.

[quote="mntorankusu"]The only way I can imagine to fix it would be to improve the frame rate.[/quote]
Or to use a 20 fps (1 frame skip) update instead of 30 fps (2 frame skip).[/quote]

Genesis didn't have mode where the R button is on most controllers. It was on the controller's face.

http://members.sparedollar.com/gamebandit/Sega-Genesis-Cont.jpg

see
also, not all six button controllers had a mode button. The mode button wasn't used in gameplay, so it could be a touch screen button, or ommited entirley. A,B,X,Y,L,R, and start could act as genesis buttons. Select could be the mode button. and button combos can always be used

shadowcolt22 wrote:

Where are we supposed to post names of games and how they ran for this project?

If the games are homebrew, and they've also been successfully tested on a Genesis flash card, then go ahead and post them here. But if the games are commercial, the rules of this forum state that you're not supposed to post about getting "backups" to run. I answered your question back on page 6.
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KorteX wrote:

Suggestion: L button will be necessary for emulate 6 buttons controller (i wanna play street fighter please!), maybe the button for the scaling switch will be a good idea to use a combination of buttons (example: L button + Select or Select + Start...)

Why use buttom combos? There's a fully functional touch screen on the system, settings could go there.

Last edited by M3d10n on Sun Jun 11, 2006 12:30 pm; edited 1 time in total

M3d10n wrote:

KorteX wrote:

Suggestion: L button will be necessary for emulate 6 buttons controller (i wanna play street fighter please!), maybe the button for the scaling switch will be a good idea to use a combination of buttons (example: L button + Select or Select + Start...)

Why use buttom combos? There's a fully funcitonal touch screen on the system, settings could go there.

Yes great idea ^^. touch screen = lot of buttons :D

I just hope the touch code for this option menu uses decent outlier rejection, unlike nesDS.
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I'm surprised it runs this good and has good compatability. I'd say the nds scene is doing quite well now. I can live without sound if it means better speed. Great job!

PicoDriveDS 0.1.3 is up! Changes:

Added long filename support
Added support for going up a directory by pressing B
Added support for skipping ahead/back 5 files at a time with R/L
Added automatic save/load SRAM support

Files are the same place as before or you can use the handy new release directories to be sure.

The SRAM feature is not the same thing as savestates. Basically it emulates a Genesis cart's internal Save RAM, and whenever the SRAM is written to it writes out (romname).srm. When you load a game, it looks to see if that SRAM file is there and loads it if so.

Oh god THANK YOU Ryan FB for SRAM! It even works on SuperCard-SD, I love it. I think I'll go play some Sonic 3 now :P

Ryan FB,

Do you see sound with decent gameplay speed in the future of PicodriveDS?

Is it possible?
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Possible, yes. As to when, I couldn't tell you, but these things take time.

Ryan FB wrote:

Possible, yes. As to when, I couldn't tell you, but these things take time.

hi please add support to ez flash IV , i really want to use this emu in my ez flash thanks,
sorry for my english (im from mexico)

Ryan FB wrote:

Possible, yes. As to when, I couldn't tell you, but these things take time.

I cross my fingers for it :D

does anyone have any idea why Sonic 3 & knuckles hangs out when picodrive is reading the rom header? is it because it is a composite game (composed by 2 cartridges)?

a certain game thats forceful about thunder for the forth time freezes when you collect a pick-up, which is a tragedy because it looks amazing on the dslite screen and is a great game.

daninski wrote:

a certain game thats forceful about thunder for the forth time freezes when you collect a pick-up, which is a tragedy because it looks amazing on the dslite screen and is a great game.

Barney's Hide & Seek?

I keed, I keed. I noticed the same thing as well.

bloody hell! boggles the mind that we've got all these other emulators laying around that nobody could've implemented proper SD saving into months ago. thanks for the update, now let's see hardware rendering =)

Sram save...fantastic :)
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deedark wrote:

does anyone have any idea why Sonic 3 & knuckles hangs out when picodrive is reading the rom header? is it because it is a composite game (composed by 2 cartridges)?

No. Because you can try Sonic 1 & Knuckles, the game works (press A+B+C+START to get the "real game"), Sonic 2 & Knucles also work if I remember right.

Some games don't work, yeah, like Super Street Fighter 2 (the size of the rom is recognized to zero), but It can be fixed I think (or bad rom, but I don't think so)

Ryan : Thanks a lot for the B button and left/right arrows options in the rom list ^_^

ethoscapade wrote:

bloody hell! boggles the mind that we've got all these other emulators laying around that nobody could've implemented proper SD saving into months ago. thanks for the update, now let's see hardware rendering =)

That's not guaranteed. Hardware rendering needs scaling in order to fit 320x224 pixels on a 256x192 pixel screen. Does the Nintendo DS hardware support palettes and more than 256 unique tiles in rot/scale backgrounds? Or is it like the GBA in that all tiles must be 256 colors and only 256 tiles are available?
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Quote:

does anyone have any idea why Sonic 3 & knuckles hangs out when picodrive is reading the rom header? is it because it is a composite game (composed by 2 cartridges)?

Right now, it would be a miracle if any 4MB ROMs worked. Currently PicoDriveDS just tries to malloc however large the ROM is and fread it into memory, if that fails it's going to crash. The DS only has 4MB of RAM, and some of that is used by PicoDriveDS itself, so I would need to come up with something for large ROMs that can malloc as much as it can and then cache data from the cart using something like LRU to reduce cache misses.

SSFII is a special case that I probably won't get around to for a while.

Ryan FB wrote:

so I would need to come up with something for large ROMs that can malloc as much as it can and then cache data from the cart using something like LRU to reduce cache misses.

PocketNES for GBAMP uses exactly this technique.

Quote:

SSFII is a special case that I probably won't get around to for a while.

The SSF2 mapper as described by that text file doesn't look more complicated than the simpler NES mappers (e.g. UNROM).
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tepples wrote:

Ryan FB wrote:

so I would need to come up with something for large ROMs that can malloc as much as it can and then cache data from the cart using something like LRU to reduce cache misses.

PocketNES for GBAMP uses exactly this technique.

I am 90% sure SMS for the GBAMP also does.
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tepples wrote:

ethoscapade wrote:

bloody hell! boggles the mind that we've got all these other emulators laying around that nobody could've implemented proper SD saving into months ago. thanks for the update, now let's see hardware rendering =)

That's not guaranteed. Hardware rendering needs scaling in order to fit 320x224 pixels on a 256x192 pixel screen. Does the Nintendo DS hardware support palettes and more than 256 unique tiles in rot/scale backgrounds? Or is it like the GBA in that all tiles must be 256 colors and only 256 tiles are available?

tepples, just once, i really wish you wouldn't shoot down so many rhetorical suggestions. heh.

still, though, i can't think of any other way to make up the speed that's missing from picodrive. and granted, i know next to nothing about this stuff.

Unfortunately this release of Picodrive doesn't work on my SuperCard SD(white screens after the emulator's loading).
However older versions, like PicoDriveDS 0.1.2, runs great.

Congratulations for this superb work ! ^^

RagnarTFM wrote:

Unfortunately this release of Picodrive doesn't work on my SuperCard SD(white screens after the emulator's loading).
However older versions, like PicoDriveDS 0.1.2, runs great.

Congratulations for this superb work ! ^^

Use the .ds.gba.

for supercard homebrew, download the ds.gba and rename it to .nds
_________________
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You are using the wrong picodrive file with the supercard sd. you need to use the regular '.nds.gba' file and rename it to '.nds'
-
ok 2 other ppl already answered that.
_________________
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BOOm BOOm

haha, you makes 3 :)

i only resaid that because he didnt mention renaming it
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Ryan FB wrote:

The SRAM feature is not the same thing as savestates. Basically it emulates a Genesis cart's internal Save RAM, and whenever the SRAM is written to it writes out (romname).srm. When you load a game, it looks to see if that SRAM file is there and loads it if so.

So do I create .sav files or .srm files on my SD Card? How does it work?

Excellent emu btw.

Alright thanks a lot guys. =)

miner2049er wrote:

Ryan FB wrote:

The SRAM feature is not the same thing as savestates. Basically it emulates a Genesis cart's internal Save RAM, and whenever the SRAM is written to it writes out (romname).srm. When you load a game, it looks to see if that SRAM file is there and loads it if so.

So do I create .sav files or .srm files on my SD Card? How does it work?

Excellent emu btw.

Just load up a game that uses SRAM (ala Sonic 3) and play like normal. It auto-saves (writes to SRAM) when the game calls for it. Easy peasy.

Kvasir wrote:

Just load up a game that uses SRAM (ala Sonic 3) and play like normal. It auto-saves (writes to SRAM) when the game calls for it. Easy peasy.

OK, I never used a Megadrive so I don't know exactly how their save system worked.

I am using a Supercard SD, so is it possible for me to play a game and have it save my progress to sram, then write that sram to my SD card so it is there even after I poweroff?

Is the sram data only available for as long as I am powered on?

It'll work after you power off, try out Sonic 3 and it should save your progress for you as you go.

Kvasir wrote:

It'll work after you power off, try out Sonic 3 and it should save your progress for you as you go.

Great, I'll try it tonight.

I'll take your word for it, but generally with the supercard you need to save sram to SD for it stay after poweroff.

Also, if I play a different game sram will be overwritten.

Maybe the .srm data in sram modifies the .smd/.bin file?

It seems that I have a problem with m3miniSD: After having load a game, if I push select and go to the game selection, I can't go back to the game I played. And If i use R to skip 5 files and I'm less than 5 files far from the end, the cursor get stuck one line under the last selectable.

And can you make it work by starting it with A instead of Start? (btw I never understood the differences between those two launching methods.) I believe it was working with A on the 1.2.

youplaboum wrote:

It seems that I have a problem with m3miniSD: After having load a game, if I push select and go to the game selection, I can't go back to the game I played.

Me neither. I think it's just built that way. i.e. if you push SELECT to pick a new game it just drops the one you're currently playing.

miner:

this thing is written specifically for supercard. you don't need to do anything else. it handles saving just fine on its own.

Quote:

Also, if I play a different game sram will be overwritten.

Maybe the .srm data in sram modifies the .smd/.bin file?

If you have Game1.smd and Game2.smd which use SRAM and you play them, if you look at the actual files on your SD card afterwards there will be Game1.srm and Game2.srm in addition to the smd files.

youplaboum wrote:

It seems that I have a problem with m3miniSD: After having load a game, if I push select and go to the game selection, I can't go back to the game I played.

Can you expand on what you're saying here? I can go back to the game I was playing, but it starts over, which is the way it is currently designed. Is the game you played not on the list, or does it crash when you select it?

Quote:

And If i use R to skip 5 files and I'm less than 5 files far from the end, the cursor get stuck one line under the last selectable.

Whoops, this is definitely a bug I didn't catch. It seems to only happen if there's just one screen of files. It will be fixed in the next release.

Love this emulator, but i have some suggestions:

-Sound, please!!!

-When you hit Select to choose another game, and maybe you want to go back to keep playing that game, you cant... Maybe make it so that if select is hit again, it resumes the game...

-And you can add alot more menus/settings by using the touchscreen to enable the menu for loads, saves, etc...

-and is there any way to improve the speed of the game, theres a bit of delay which can get annoying...

Thanks

Ryan FB wrote:

youplaboum wrote:

It seems that I have a problem with m3miniSD: After having load a game, if I push select and go to the game selection, I can't go back to the game I played.

Can you expand on what you're saying here? I can go back to the game I was playing, but it starts over, which is the way it is currently designed. Is the game you played not on the list, or does it crash when you select it?

The logical behaviour would be to use the select button like a "pause" one: I play, press Select to change game, change my mind, press select one more time to go back when I first pressed it.

In fact, wait for another game being selected before stopping the emulation. that way if I press select by error, I can still go back to my game without crying to death for the lost game.

ethoscapade wrote:

miner:

this thing is written specifically for supercard. you don't need to do anything else. it handles saving just fine on its own.

Brilliant, thanks for the info.

That's what I hoped would happen but all my other emus need a .sav.

Sorted.

I noticed that on the hedgehog games, there is a sort of ripping effect. I've gotten this affect on games like doom 3 on my pc. It's kind of hard to describe. There's sort of horizontal lines where the screen blurs. Is there a fix for this?

This is because I write directly into VRAM without double buffering, so tearing sometimes results. It was one of the things I was intending to fix in 0.1.3 but it got skipped because I'm rewriting a whole lot of the video stuff right now.

that is wonderful news!

youplaboum wrote:

And can you make it work by starting it with A instead of Start? (btw I never understood the differences between those two launching methods.) I believe it was working with A on the 1.2.

for M3, the easiest way to get it to work is to load Pepsiman's loader with my batch file. You can get that at http://myweb.cableone.net/takieda/bin/bootloader_v1.1.rar
(yeah, I know, it's just hosted on my isp - all other filehosts seem to think my files are somehow "illegal" and keep deleting my account)

Basically, just download the file and read the readme.txt file. It will append the loader onto your .nds file allowing you to press A instead of Start to start ANY homebrew that you have that problem with.
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Is there a way to have the SRAM get saved to a file on the media device?

TheChuckster wrote:

Is there a way to have the SRAM get saved to a file on the media device?

If your cart's driver supports FEATURE_MEDIUM_CANWRITE in fatlib that's how it should work automatically. Does it not work that way for you, and if so what cart are you using?

PicoDriveDS 0.1.4 is up! This is mostly a minor bugfix/enhancement release while I continue work on the new renderer. Changes:

Fixed bug where R could scroll past end of file list
Switched to unified builds, now one build should work for all SD/CF carts (thanks WinterMute)
Added NeoFlash MK2/MK3 support (thanks WinterMute)
Changed it so that pressing Select again without choosing a file will resume emulation

Get it here.

thanks dude :), all works lavely

wow!
tnx :P but we need sound and more speed :$ please

thanks, but still dont work in ez flash 4 :(

HtheB wrote:

but we need sound and more speed :$ please

Does :$ mean you're willing to toss some gil in the donation box?
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while i don't want to detract from time spent working on the renderer, would it be possible to release a builder that prepends the rom to the emulator for use in traditional flashcarts?

i ask because i just got an ez4, and i'm aware that ezteam is notorious for never releasing libs so ez4 support is out of the question, but a version that would enable you to build-in roms would at least work.

tepples wrote:

HtheB wrote:

but we need sound and more speed :$ please

Does :$ mean you're willing to toss some gil in the donation box?

hahaa its a Smile.. on MSN Messenger (a "blush" smile)

ethoscapade wrote:

i ask because i just got an ez4, and i'm aware that ezteam is notorious for never releasing libs so ez4 support is out of the question, but a version that would enable you to build-in roms would at least work.

I just got an EZ4 as well, so I'm interested in adding support for it. I tried porting in the EZ4 SD driver from MoonShell for this release, but it crashed on boot so I removed it. I might make another build against the full MoonShell FAT libs and see if that works.

Ryan FB wrote:

PicoDriveDS 0.1.4 is up! This is mostly a minor bugfix/enhancement release while I continue work on the new renderer. Changes:

Fixed bug where R could scroll past end of file list
Switched to unified builds, now one build should work for all SD/CF carts (thanks WinterMute)
Added NeoFlash MK2/MK3 support (thanks WinterMute)
Changed it so that pressing Select again without choosing a file will resume emulation

Get it here.

0.1.4 isnt working for me on M3 MiniSD, I get a black black screen with some garbled graphics on the top screen - tried starting with A + Start but with no luck. 0.1.3 works fine, maybe you need to do the clearing RAM thingy for us M3 users?

Great work so far tho! :)

if you actually managed to coax ez4 support out of moonshell i would have to donate at least a little bit; you'd be the first homebrew coder to have pulled it off.

and if not, i'd still be happy with traditional flashcart support =)

The 0.1.4 .nds worked fine for me on my m3 miniSD with v21 firmware and manager.

Quote:

if you actually managed to coax ez4 support out of moonshell i would have to donate at least a little bit; you'd be the first homebrew coder to have pulled it off.

I'm not sure if I'm understanding you right but there's no need to coax anything from anyone -- MoonShell is open source so you can use the included functions for the EZ4 and I believe other homebrew developers have already done so.

If you have time, do you think you could implement sleep mode?

I have a M3SD Slim and the emulator picodrive not works. My SD is formatted as Fat32, I have the ultimate firmware (e21b), I push the a button and the start, and nothing. It appears a line on a black background, and it is hung.

What I must do so that it works?

I don't have my DS handy but it works on my m3 with v21. There are two different versions an .nds and a .ds.gba. Try the other version and it should work. If it doesn't work with A then hit Start instead.

Try PicoDriveDS 0.1.3 and see if that works. It seems like I may have broken some M3 support stuff in 0.1.4 when I switched to the new libnds, it should be fixed again in the next release.

The 0.1.3 version does not work to me either. The screens appear in black.

hal9000 wrote:

The 0.1.3 version does not work to me either. The screens appear in black.

O_o I got M3SD (Slim) Model too and it just works GREAT! :) keep up the good work ;)

Just to say that 1.4 does not work either on my M3miniSD. 1.3 still work great though.

when will be out the new renderer version?

youplaboum wrote:

Just to say that 1.4 does not work either on my M3miniSD. 1.3 still work great though.

neither 1.3 nor 1.4 work on my M3 mini sd with pass3 - whats different ?

Ryan, you should make your emulator work with EZ4 and make some speed improvements, then enter this contest.
http://sosuke.com/ezflash/about1376.html

You'd win for sure.

Nice work! I thought I'd register to say I got this working on Supercard CF / Flashme7Lite by renaming this file:

http://www.cryptosystem.org/projects/nds/picodriveds-cf.nds.gba

...to a .nds extension

So far I've tried about 20 games on it, and every one worked, at about 80% speed. I'll definately be keeping an eye on this :)

I'm getting a Supercard MiniSD tomorrow, will return with feedback on how that one works too

Thanks again!

shadowcolt22 wrote:

Ryan, you should make your emulator work with EZ4 and make some speed improvements, then enter this contest.
http://sosuke.com/ezflash/about1376.html

You'd win for sure.

Id vote :)
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I'd vote if a flashcart version was amde.
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dualscreenman wrote:

What about Gaim DS? Gaim pretty much has support for all IM programs.

tepples wrote:

"Goshdammit, the DS is not a Gaim-boy! It's a third pillar!"

I got my miniSD Supercard today, the SD version of Picodrive works just fine on it, exactly the same as the CF version did :)

Again, for supercard users: use the .nds.gba file and rename it to .nds

If you enter this in the competition, you have my vote, and several of my friends votes too :)

I just logged in with Bugmenot to tell you this.

The only game I could get working was Sonic 2 and it was very very buggy (I guess some would call it playable but I personally couldnt)

Im going to keep watching this though.. as it looks really cool.

On topic again guys?

...and back to the megadrive emu! any WIP news on this? i'm constantly playing thunderforce Iv (which i have the cart for :) ) without collecting anything because it freezes when you do. the game looks very very pretty on a dslites screen.

me too.. i was wondering if there are any WIP ...

The next release will have a new Cyclone core as well as a bunch of other stuff. It will also include the source code. I've worked on sound some - it can run choppily on ARM9, but it slows everything down to about 6fps, and moving it all over to ARM7 probably won't be easy, and hence probably won't be in the next release. Progress on the HW renderer has been slower than I would like because I've been really busy at work the past few weeks, in combination with getting to know all the quirks of the DS video hardware.

This topic has been buried for a while, is the project on hiatus?

gbadev.org forum archive

DS homebrew announcements > PicoDriveDS - Genesis Emulator Port

#86430 - Ryan FB - Wed Jun 07, 2006 4:27 am

#86432 - Madrigal - Wed Jun 07, 2006 4:34 am

#86433 - Ryan FB - Wed Jun 07, 2006 4:37 am

#86434 - Mr. Picklesworth - Wed Jun 07, 2006 4:49 am

#86435 - Ryan FB - Wed Jun 07, 2006 4:53 am

#86438 - Madrigal - Wed Jun 07, 2006 5:13 am

#86439 - Normmatt - Wed Jun 07, 2006 5:42 am

#86440 - uzumakishade - Wed Jun 07, 2006 5:53 am

#86442 - Mr. Picklesworth - Wed Jun 07, 2006 6:12 am

#86443 - Ryan FB - Wed Jun 07, 2006 6:17 am

#86450 - Nuja - Wed Jun 07, 2006 8:49 am

#86451 - stingfist - Wed Jun 07, 2006 9:01 am

#86458 - ?hr - Wed Jun 07, 2006 10:22 am

#86462 - LiraNuna - Wed Jun 07, 2006 11:37 am

#86463 - mntorankusu - Wed Jun 07, 2006 11:42 am

#86466 - daninski - Wed Jun 07, 2006 11:52 am

#86468 - ratx - Wed Jun 07, 2006 12:48 pm

#86469 - HtheB - Wed Jun 07, 2006 12:54 pm

#86473 - Vegetable - Wed Jun 07, 2006 1:29 pm

#86474 - Nuja - Wed Jun 07, 2006 1:35 pm

#86476 - HtheB - Wed Jun 07, 2006 1:36 pm

#86482 - Wonder Boy - Wed Jun 07, 2006 2:04 pm

#86484 - Nuja - Wed Jun 07, 2006 2:28 pm

#86485 - HtheB - Wed Jun 07, 2006 2:29 pm

#86486 - HtheB - Wed Jun 07, 2006 3:22 pm

#86489 - Critical_Impact - Wed Jun 07, 2006 3:46 pm

#86503 - Ryan FB - Wed Jun 07, 2006 4:44 pm

#86506 - Kturbo - Wed Jun 07, 2006 4:53 pm

#86509 - thundrestrike - Wed Jun 07, 2006 5:10 pm

#86511 - LiraNuna - Wed Jun 07, 2006 5:17 pm

#86512 - Kvasir - Wed Jun 07, 2006 5:47 pm

#86516 - Zed0 - Wed Jun 07, 2006 5:59 pm

#86534 - asgatlat - Wed Jun 07, 2006 7:03 pm

#86535 - The 9th Sage - Wed Jun 07, 2006 7:14 pm

#86540 - thundrestrike - Wed Jun 07, 2006 7:39 pm

#86542 - Darkflame - Wed Jun 07, 2006 7:49 pm

#86543 - Flyfishing - Wed Jun 07, 2006 7:58 pm

#86547 - Darkflame - Wed Jun 07, 2006 8:22 pm

#86548 - Zed0 - Wed Jun 07, 2006 8:27 pm

#86553 - ethoscapade - Wed Jun 07, 2006 8:47 pm

#86555 - mr_de_fursac - Wed Jun 07, 2006 8:50 pm

#86557 - mortys - Wed Jun 07, 2006 8:52 pm

#86560 - Darkflame - Wed Jun 07, 2006 9:02 pm

#86562 - Shoryu - Wed Jun 07, 2006 9:12 pm

#86564 - Darkflame - Wed Jun 07, 2006 9:17 pm

#86565 - Darkflame - Wed Jun 07, 2006 9:30 pm

#86567 - ethoscapade - Wed Jun 07, 2006 9:58 pm

#86576 - Darkflame - Wed Jun 07, 2006 10:46 pm

#86578 - Lazy1 - Wed Jun 07, 2006 11:20 pm

#86581 - Zed0 - Wed Jun 07, 2006 11:32 pm

#86582 - Nuja - Wed Jun 07, 2006 11:39 pm

#86583 - dustin - Wed Jun 07, 2006 11:50 pm

#86584 - Ryan FB - Thu Jun 08, 2006 12:17 am

#86586 - Darkflame - Thu Jun 08, 2006 12:50 am

#86587 - ethoscapade - Thu Jun 08, 2006 12:50 am

#86588 - Darkflame - Thu Jun 08, 2006 1:09 am

#86589 - Codemaster - Thu Jun 08, 2006 2:37 am

#86594 - spacepirate - Thu Jun 08, 2006 3:29 am

#86597 - tepples - Thu Jun 08, 2006 4:21 am

#86599 - Grupstra - Thu Jun 08, 2006 4:26 am

#86610 - Hiei- - Thu Jun 08, 2006 7:31 am

#86618 - Normmatt - Thu Jun 08, 2006 9:20 am

#86626 - deedark - Thu Jun 08, 2006 11:37 am

#86639 - Darkflame - Thu Jun 08, 2006 2:02 pm

#86645 - Ryan FB - Thu Jun 08, 2006 3:10 pm

#86649 - HtheB - Thu Jun 08, 2006 3:40 pm

#86651 - Darkflame - Thu Jun 08, 2006 3:51 pm

#86652 - Apoc - Thu Jun 08, 2006 3:53 pm

#86664 - Hiei- - Thu Jun 08, 2006 4:16 pm

#86671 - thundrestrike - Thu Jun 08, 2006 4:45 pm

#86674 - Madrigal - Thu Jun 08, 2006 5:03 pm

#86678 - Fleet-C - Thu Jun 08, 2006 5:21 pm

#86684 - LiraNuna - Thu Jun 08, 2006 5:55 pm

#86686 - Hiei- - Thu Jun 08, 2006 6:04 pm

#86689 - Fleet-C - Thu Jun 08, 2006 6:19 pm

#86692 - Hiei- - Thu Jun 08, 2006 6:28 pm

#86695 - thundrestrike - Thu Jun 08, 2006 6:33 pm

#86696 - Hiei- - Thu Jun 08, 2006 6:34 pm